<p>Why didn't you want to go to cornell?</p>
<p>They were bragging about having their psychology class in an auditorium with over 1000 kids. Sorry, that's not the way I work. That's more kids than are in my entire freshman class, that's not how even intro courses should work. That's what I think, I feel I'll learn better in smaller classes and that's enough of an incentive for me.</p>
<p>What I have noticed is that, outside of the Northeast and California, there is not the same pressure to attend the top colleges. Where I am in Florida, and when I visit my dad in Arizona, no one even applies to the top schools. I know two valedictorians down here. Neither applied to any school outside of Florida even though both did decently on the SATs (and were Valedictorians in schools where the class size was almost 1000.) The name on your college doesn't matter. For me, I know that I will learn more in a private university that is smaller and has only really smart people. For others, they will learn better in huge state schools with a range of people.</p>
<p>I think you missed the point on the class they were bragging about. They were talking about a famous class at Cornell, Psych 101, which is the largest lecture class in the nation I believe. I sat in on this class twice. The professor is amazingly charismatic, interesting, and entertaining, and as strange as this sounds, Cornell prides itself on the number of students in this particular course. The course is not really intended for psych majors--it is a course that attracts all students, from every possible major and school, from hotelies to engineers, and it's a source of comraderie, especially among freshmen. It's a fun bonding experience and almost ritualistic. All other intro courses are much, much smaller, but the profs who teach them are all just as charismatic...I think they hire them deliberately for their lecturing prowess.</p>
<p>Sorry, not my thing.
It might be yours or someone elses. Like I said, it was me and not the school. Cornell's a mighty fine institution :-)</p>
<p>This thread is stupid.</p>
<p>Well I like it. It's a nice break from all those chancechanceschancesjusttellmei'llgotoHYPSDalready!!!!!! threads.</p>
<p>LOL melli...but aren't we all guilty of that haha</p>
<p>p.s. what the hell is D in HYPSD</p>
<p>I think the D is a mistake. The poster probably hit it by mistake while hiting the S! LOL</p>
<p>D=Dartmouth!</p>
<p>Could be Dartmouth or Duke...</p>
<p>Neither should be lumped with HYPS. Only MIT should be lumped with those 4. </p>
<p>If you want to add the DDs, you might as well add the CCCCCs (Cal, Caltech, Chicago, Columbia and Cornell), B (Brown), N (Northwestern), P (penn) to name a few (leaving out a certain M to avoid the usual outcry! LOL).</p>
<p>Or we could drop that godforsaken acronym altogether.</p>
<p>This isn't a college decision, but it's still stupid:</p>
<p>*Friend graduates with a 4.0, 3rd in our class and one spot ahead of me (she took some easier classes than I did), gets the best grades in science and math, but three things happened: She got a Math ACT score of 20, a Science ACT score of 25, and she actually did not know who Tony Blair was until she called me up and asked me who the PM of Britain was because she needed to know for school or something.</p>
<p>Then, she had a stupid brainwave of thinking she wouldn't get in at any college and was about to not apply anywhere except for a local rubbish community college when I made her apply to a few random state schools. She doesn't think she'll even do well at Michigan Tech (what she chose) which happens to have a male student body percentage of like 75+% or something, and she might consider leaving next year to go to Wayne State. She hasn't a clue what she wants to do except "maybe something with science." </p>
<p>Our Salutatorian took a heck of a lot of easy classes and beat me out because my school doesn't take any "quality" into account, even when grading. So for someone like me, a perfectionist who tries to make all my work outstanding, I am two spots in our class below the Salutatorian who squeaked by in our classes just because she did the work, but with no real effort at quality. Even my 8th grade teacher told me when I visited that she was shocked at who was Salutatorian because she never thought the girl had enough determination to do well. Then she asked me if the girl took a bunch of easy classes and she agreed that was why it worked out the way it did. </p>
<p>I am going UChicago btw. First person accepted to a prestigous school from my high school since a girl got into Penn about 15 years ago.</p>
<p>That is why I like the Chicago Public Schools ranking system. They all RANK BY WEIGHT(except Northside). Northside has an ACT average of 28-30 so they don't rank otherwise a 3.9 would put you somewhere near the bottom of the class.</p>
<p>Everyone with a 4.0(All A's) in easy classes gets owned by 4.1s with B's in higher classes.</p>
<p>EDIT: It is insane not to reward people with a harder courseload in ranking over people who take an easy course.</p>
<p>I'm envious of you bashful.</p>
<p>Lol I had Duke in mind when I typed that. =P It's on par with HYPS in my high school. We should just include every college and go ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. There, everyone's college is prestigious enough to warrant their own letter.</p>
<p>Turned down Stanford for Duke, lives in Washington state and is really attached to his family...so I'd think the distance would have made the decision hard.
Another, turned down Chicago and Northwestern for PSU Schreyers honors college and money wasn't a factor.
And finally, the infamous person at our school who turned down Cornell for University of Pittsburgh because "Cornell didn't have my major". Psh. Money was a factor however.</p>
<p>Thats the only few I've heard recently, the rest seem to pick schools in the order of their US News/ London Times rankings (for out of US kids).</p>
<p>
[quote]
the rest seem to pick schools in the order of their US News/ London Times rankings (for out of US kids).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>To base which school one goes to based solely on ranking (as your post implies) is the stupidest college decision of all.</p>
<p>feenotype, i'm not saying what i think students should do, just what they do do</p>